A progressive voice is gone. Too bad for the nation he leaves behind.
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo — who died Thursday at age 82 — once was thought to be a possible candidate for president. Why, he even might have become president one day, perhaps a good or great president at that.
He chose instead to stay in Albany, N.Y., and govern his state. Cuomo would lose his governor’s job eventually in that 1994 Republican sweep, the one that took control of Congress and tossed out a number of governors. Cuomo was gone from public office, as was, say, his friend and colleague Ann Richards here in Texas.
But take a listen to a speech this good man delivered a decade earlier, at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. He told of a “tale of two cities.” One was the “shining city on the hill” envisioned by President Reagan. But there was another city that Gov. Cuomo sought to lift up.
He sought to bring attention to the suffering he said the president was dismissing.
Cuomo’sĀ brand of progressiveness wasn’t the knee-jerk brand.Ā HeĀ spoke from his heart. No, his politics didn’t play well in much of the country in 1984. Was his progressive brandĀ popular here, in Texas — and in this part of the Lone Star State?Ā Not even close.
As he told the DNC delegates in San Francisco that evening, he wanted the nation to know that while, yes, the nation did symbolize the shining city, it was — and is — a more complex place. People who are suffering need help from the government.
After all, he said, it is their government, too.
Rest in peace, governor.